Intel Core i7-1165G7 Review: Tiger Lake Inside

[Scorpus]

It's time we check out Intel's new Tiger Lake mobile CPUs, starting with the Core i7-1165G7, a part that will be mostly found on mainstream to high-end ultraportables. Tiger Lake represents a substantial overhaul of Intel's mobile offerings.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/2158-intel-tiger-lake-core-i7-1165g7/

 

[fps4ever]

With more watts comes more performance, who knew right? Is mainstream mobile parts considered 15, 25, 28 or 35 watts now?

 

[Arbie]

Another excellent review, doing all that work to get the facts and then calling it as it is. As expected from HU. (This from an AMD fanboy).

 

[redhat]

It is remarkable CPU but kinda remind me of kaby-lake vs Zen 1.
Although I use mostly Single threaded apps, still I would go with AMD as we have seen how Zen 1 could handle tasks better as times go.

 

[lipe123]

I just can't understand low power laptops.

They can't be used for office work, I mean unless all you ever do is type in notepad and call that office work.
They are basically glorified media streaming devices and kinda compete with tablets?

I work for a company where everyone uses laptops and I only buy the fastest most power hungry beasts I can afford because anything less leaves users frustrated and productivity is gone.

 

[Irata]

Too bad power consumption and battery life were not included. ST performance is certainly very nice, but of course it depends how much power the CPU burns to get there.

Quick question: Are the 15+ W per Willow Cove core for boost correct ?

 

[Big Royce]

Is there any way we can get Apple m1 Chips on the benchmarks? I am curious how the m1 single core and perf / watt stacks up.

 

[HardReset]

90/100 seems pretty high for something that barely can match last generation AMD APU's.

Thanks to much higher single-thread performance, the Core i7-1165G7 is faster than the Ryzen 7 4700U or 4800U for things web browsing, app loading, Office productivity, photo editing in Photoshop, and even some accelerated encoding work.

Luckily most modern web browsers are multithreaded. Just tried using Firefox with "single core CPU" (virtual machine, 1 core available) and that was pretty painful experience.

Also some games use all available CPU power when loading. Perhaps data is compressed heavily but 16 threads is not enough.

 

[Makste]

High quality cores. Too bad they are only four. And I believe they can really compete or mostly beat renoir in multi-threaded tasks if they are atleast 6 and better yet 8. But they'd be plagued by high power consumption right? Which doesn't fit in well with low power notebooks. But some people here said that intel's 10nm is equal to or better than ryzen's 7nm process. If this holds some truth to it, then why is the 10nm on this i7-1165G7 requiring more power to match or beat the 7nm on the renoir die? Atleast the M1 didn't need more power to match or take wins. Meaning M1 at 5nm was more power efficient than renoir at 7nm.

 

[amghwk]

The Ryzen 7 4800U is still impressive and crushes Intel even at 15W. When playing fair, without dedicated graphics, the 4800U is remarkable. And the upcoming 5800U might be even better. And Tiger Lake flagships still coming with 4 cores in this day and age?

The only problem is, despite the 4800U's excellent performance per Watt, not many companies have generous offering with the CPU. More companies should take up the initiative to promote it. I guess, they are afraid of not able to push much sales and profit, due to the past lackluster AMD based laptops' reputation.

 

[Makste]

The Ryzen 7 4800U is still impressive and crushes Intel even at 15W. When playing fair, without dedicated graphics, the 4800U is remarkable. And the upcoming 5800U might be even better. And Tiger Lake flagships still coming with 4 cores in this day and age?

The only problem is, despite the 4800U's excellent performance per Watt, not many companies have generous offering with the CPU. More companies should take up the initiative to promote it. I guess, they are afraid of not able to push much sales and profit, due to the past lackluster AMD based laptops' reputation.

In all truth, the 4800U is a really impressive cpu. Thing is, we need everything and not just a part of the package. We want single threaded, light threaded, multi-threaded, single core and multi-core tasks to be excellent. A thing which the 4800U accomplishes effortlessly. Its single core performance is not better than the i7-1165G7's but its good enough and the 8 cores bring the multiple core victories, and all this balanced package at a low power consumption. The i7-1165G7 has impressive single core abilities but it provides just one part of the package. If lucienne and cezanne mobile are way better than renoir 4800U/H, then intel's offerings this time are just average or even low end.
If I was AMD, the 4800U/H would be my base offering from here on out. Meaning that all my future offerings should be better than the 4800U/H. This ensures a high quality product stack for the company.

 

[dragosmp]

Very nice read as always with lots of data and good comparison charts

On the conclusions though, the TL being a "light app speed monster", does that factor in people's buying decision? I feel like runnig a particularly light single-threaded app really quick is a problem that has been solved with Skylake/Kaby. In my work I only see (and gen annoyed by) the speed of a laptop when doing heavy lifting apps - FEA simulation, big scene rendering, big Excel sheet calcs/updates. I prefer doing all of this on a laptop, as I can take it home or in meetings and not waste time. Feels like a CPU with broad shoulders that can perform well in heavy tasks, while at low power and keeping quiet is the best.

Otherwise, it's interesting how Ryzen doesn't scale with increased TDP. Maybe the 5-series will fix it.

 

[rmcrys]

I just can't understand low power laptops.

They can't be used for office work, I mean unless all you ever do is type in notepad and call that office work.

You are completely wrong. Most people do web browsing, office / write / PowerPoint / excel, web pages construction, light media editing, email, or VPN / Remote Desktop or use company's software, which is usually light. Even YouTubers that edit 4K Videos, a lot of them use MBP with i7 / simple Radeon graphics. (With the M1 from apple, now even a MB Air does it right...).


Only gamers, people with high 3D needs / CAD or very intensive tasks need something more.
I use a Surface Go 2 when not at home, when I need something powerful, I connect with TeamViewer and I make the home computer sweat (while it seems that I am doing everything on the Go 2).

 

[rmcrys]

On the conclusions though, the TL being a "light app speed monster", does that factor in people's buying decision?

Most people buy a laptop according to the "package" (screen, build quality, battery life, etc), not only with the CPU. Intel showed us that they
1) where not working and relaxed for many years as they had the monopoly

2) they are the real bosses from the laptop companies and the high end laptops usually are only Intel based, so it's hard to find a Ryzen with an excellent screen panel, Dual channel RAM and high end NVMe SSDs, as big batteries. You don't see (yet) an XPS with AMD an so good hardware...

3) Adobe software is horrible optimized and the little optimization is for... Intel.

Honestly I would go Apple M1 or AMD (windows/ Linux), the platforms hold longer, less issues and software is going towards multithread, so AMD wins there. If you plan to buy a good laptop with good performance also in 4 years, go AMD. If you plan to have a laptop that in 4 years after some updates will go slow and is heating a lot, go Intel.

I already bought an mac mini M1 and as soon as possible, I will get rid of my Intel laptop. Then I'll work only with my helpful Surface Go 2 until Microsoft releases an AMD one (or a good ARM that does x64 + ARM64 with performance and good battery)

 

[Shadowboxer]

I work under a large FTSE100 listed plc, the third party hardware provider still gives unsuspecting or unaware new staff AMD A10 powered notebooks. These are truly awful notebooks that seem to crawl even when using basic office apps, because of this new staff are routinely told to push back and ask for “an Intel model”.

It’s things like this that give AMD a bad rep, you can ask for a Ryzen model, however currently that limits you to 8gb of RAM and it’s not unusual to need more than that in the office these days.

I suspect after a few years, once all of AMDs older dire offerings are depleted amongst these hardware providers (which clearly account for a huge amount) we will see more widespread adoption by OEMs for AMD CPUs.

 

[HardReset]

I work under a large FTSE100 listed plc, the third party hardware provider still gives unsuspecting or unaware new staff AMD A10 powered notebooks. These are truly awful notebooks that seem to crawl even when using basic office apps, because of this new staff are routinely told to push back and ask for “an Intel model”.

It’s things like this that give AMD a bad rep, you can ask for a Ryzen model, however currently that limits you to 8gb of RAM and it’s not unusual to need more than that in the office these days.

I suspect after a few years, once all of AMDs older dire offerings are depleted amongst these hardware providers (which clearly account for a huge amount) we will see more widespread adoption by OEMs for AMD CPUs.

"Intel model" might also be one with Atom crap that is much slower than A10. So those people should just be happy they have A10 and not "similarily priced Intel" that essentially means Atom...

 

[Makste]

I work under a large FTSE100 listed plc, the third party hardware provider still gives unsuspecting or unaware new staff AMD A10 powered notebooks. These are truly awful notebooks that seem to crawl even when using basic office apps, because of this new staff are routinely told to push back and ask for “an Intel model”.

It’s things like this that give AMD a bad rep, you can ask for a Ryzen model, however currently that limits you to 8gb of RAM and it’s not unusual to need more than that in the office these days.

I suspect after a few years, once all of AMDs older dire offerings are depleted amongst these hardware providers (which clearly account for a huge amount) we will see more widespread adoption by OEMs for AMD CPUs.

Your managers should consider changing their third party hardware providers. Old outdated stock whether Intel or AMD should only be provided as a second option to expensive ware or when asked for by the buyer. Thus, using trickery to impart extremely old products to potential paying customers shows a lack of work ethic.

 

[Shadowboxer]

Your managers should consider changing their third party hardware providers. Old outdated stock whether Intel or AMD should only be provided as a second option to expensive ware or when asked for by the buyer. Thus, using trickery to impart extremely old products to potential paying customers shows a lack of work ethic.

It’s very very common in the corporate world. My company within the group is getting a new provider next month. However the new laptops are all Intel parts I hear. I have a feeling this was probably asked for by management based on the reputation of AMD parts here.

Personally I don’t care enough to bother saying anything. Intel laptops are still more than enough for my needs. I care more about what screen and keyboard the machine has than who makes the CPU. Il leave the protesting to the fanboys.

 

[lipe123]

You are completely wrong. Most people do web browsing, office / write / PowerPoint / excel, web pages construction, light media editing, email, or VPN / Remote Desktop or use company's software, which is usually light. Even YouTubers that edit 4K Videos, a lot of them use MBP with i7 / simple Radeon graphics. (With the M1 from apple, now even a MB Air does it right...).


Only gamers, people with high 3D needs / CAD or very intensive tasks need something more.
I use a Surface Go 2 when not at home, when I need something powerful, I connect with TeamViewer and I make the home computer sweat (while it seems that I am doing everything on the Go 2).

"completely wrong" what?
According to you "most people" don't do any work at work. I'm not talking about using laptops for personal(pornhub) use here.
Small business' cannot afford flagship business laptops that have a entry level cost of $2000+ so they opt for high end consumer laptops.
Except that every new "high end" intel laptop is only focusing on lower wattage cpu's and almost no improvement in processing power.

Have you even used office 365 lately? Just opening word and typing stuff is sluggish on a modern desktop!
What about a spreadsheet with 10k rows? Try just doing the most basic thing and sorting/filtering the data with a table and suddenly you have to wait 30 seconds.
We sure as heck don't need more tablets, we need actual performance to get stuff done.

Also using teamviewer or whatever else RDP option is disgusting, there is always that stupid input delay. Transferring data back and forth is an issue.
Security risks and so many more reasons that makes it a last resort.

 

[Shadowboxer]

"completely wrong" what?
According to you "most people" don't do any work at work. I'm not talking about using laptops for personal(pornhub) use here.
Small business' cannot afford flagship business laptops that have a entry level cost of $2000+ so they opt for high end consumer laptops.
Except that every new "high end" intel laptop is only focusing on lower wattage cpu's and almost no improvement in processing power.

Have you even used office 365 lately? Just opening word and typing stuff is sluggish on a modern desktop!
What about a spreadsheet with 10k rows? Try just doing the most basic thing and sorting/filtering the data with a table and suddenly you have to wait 30 seconds.
We sure as heck don't need more tablets, we need actual performance to get stuff done.

Also using teamviewer or whatever else RDP option is disgusting, there is always that stupid input delay. Transferring data back and forth is an issue.
Security risks and so many more reasons that makes it a last resort.

I work within a FTSE100 listed company, the vast majority of the 22,000+ staff there are fine with a 4GB RAM dual core laptop. Those of us within system support etc have beefier hardware but we are not representative of what most people use.

I need a system with 16GB of RAM minimum but the processor doesn’t matter that much. I can happily and quickly open spreadsheets with 10k+ lines on it with my Intel 8xxx quad core (weaker than these parts) If I need to do any heavy compute I use a virtual client and just configure it with as many cores as I need.

Most current office users don’t need a CPU upgrade (unless it’s some garbage like an AMD A10/Celeron etc), most need more RAM if anything. Of course there is always the ***** who feels they need more power, they end up lugging some heavy monster of a laptop around the office (usually because they don’t know how to use a jumpbox). Quite often users blame the sluggishness of a bad VPN on a CPU, especially now during this age of WFH. From what you’re describing, 30 seconds to open a 10k line spreadsheet? That’s not normal for any low power modern CPU, check your VPN lol.

 

[amghwk]

"completely wrong" what?
According to you "most people" don't do any work at work. I'm not talking about using laptops for personal(pornhub) use here.
Small business' cannot afford flagship business laptops that have a entry level cost of $2000+ so they opt for high end consumer laptops.
Except that every new "high end" intel laptop is only focusing on lower wattage cpu's and almost no improvement in processing power.

Have you even used office 365 lately? Just opening word and typing stuff is sluggish on a modern desktop!
What about a spreadsheet with 10k rows? Try just doing the most basic thing and sorting/filtering the data with a table and suddenly you have to wait 30 seconds.
We sure as heck don't need more tablets, we need actual performance to get stuff done.

Also using teamviewer or whatever else RDP option is disgusting, there is always that stupid input delay. Transferring data back and forth is an issue.
Security risks and so many more reasons that makes it a last resort.

I thought of ignoring your absolutely misinformed idea of "low powered laptops" but decided to chime in so that others should not get the wrong idea.

When you started talking about pornhub at work, and saying that office 365 is sluggish on modern desktops, something is indeed wrong with your machines or uninformed opinion.

Work does NOT require a H class CPU or a RTX GPU.

You should go back to read about the Ryzen 4800U CPU again. And see what it can do. It rivals even some H class CPUs even at only 15W.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"completely wrong" what?
According to you "most people" don't do any work at work. I'm not talking about using laptops for personal(pornhub) use here.
Small business' cannot afford flagship business laptops that have a entry level cost of $2000+ so they opt for high end consumer laptops.
Except that every new "high end" intel laptop is only focusing on lower wattage cpu's and almost no improvement in processing power.

Have you even used office 365 lately? Just opening word and typing stuff is sluggish on a modern desktop!
What about a spreadsheet with 10k rows? Try just doing the most basic thing and sorting/filtering the data with a table and suddenly you have to wait 30 seconds.
We sure as heck don't need more tablets, we need actual performance to get stuff done.

Also using teamviewer or whatever else RDP option is disgusting, there is always that stupid input delay. Transferring data back and forth is an issue.
Security risks and so many more reasons that makes it a last resort.

We use computers still rocking core 2 duos. Once upgraded to 8GB of RAM and SSDs, opening large multi page spreadsheets is no issue.

You vastly overestimate the power needed to run office apps.

 

[dragosmp]

Most people buy a laptop according to the "package" (screen, build quality, battery life, etc), not only with the CPU. Intel showed us that they
1) where not working and relaxed for many years as they had the monopoly

2) they are the real bosses from the laptop companies and the high end laptops usually are only Intel based, so it's hard to find a Ryzen with an excellent screen panel, Dual channel RAM and high end NVMe SSDs, as big batteries. You don't see (yet) an XPS with AMD an so good hardware...

3) Adobe software is horrible optimized and the little optimization is for... Intel.

Honestly I would go Apple M1 or AMD (windows/ Linux), the platforms hold longer, less issues and software is going towards multithread, so AMD wins there. If you plan to buy a good laptop with good performance also in 4 years, go AMD. If you plan to have a laptop that in 4 years after some updates will go slow and is heating a lot, go Intel.

I already bought an mac mini M1 and as soon as possible, I will get rid of my Intel laptop. Then I'll work only with my helpful Surface Go 2 until Microsoft releases an AMD one (or a good ARM that does x64 + ARM64 with performance and good battery)

Same here, not partisan about where my money goes. As it happens it's mostly Intel as I went laptop-only (gaming included) and would only get Dell from Latitude and up. Reason? I have chargers all over my house compatible with Dells and Dell-business is just a very good warranty, even for home user like me.

Now, within this narrow range of Dells, Latitude, Studio and XPS, would I buy an 4xxx or 5xxx AMD over TL Intel? It would seen I'd need to choose between a short ST burst vs any long-ish ST or MT task. AMD would be a no-brainer, but they need to keep it up, as yoy say, to convince the market, not fall on their face as they did during the A64 days.

 

[dragosmp]

We use computers still rocking core 2 duos. Once upgraded to 8GB of RAM and SSDs, opening large multi page spreadsheets is no issue.

You vastly overestimate the power needed to run office apps.

Just wanter to say, until about 4 months ago I was using a Thinkpad T60 C2D 8600 (oh yes high end stuff) with the nice keyboard and all. Its mobo couldn't take more than 4GB of RAM, which ultimately led to the upgrade; it was almost as fast as my current i5-8450u for most things web and office related. Fully agreed for most things an old but well configured PC with a nice clean Win install on an SSD is better than any piece of junk under 500$ from a supermarket

 

[wirebeta]

It is powerful cpu, wonderful review.